[Media-watch] Danish officer jailed for leaking Iraq WMD files to media - AFP/Tehran Times - 30/11/2004

[Julie-ann Davies]

http://www.tehrantimes.com/Description.asp?Da=12/1/2004&Cat=4&Num=003

Danish officer jailed for leaking secret Iraq WMD
reports to media

30/11/2004


COPENHAGEN (AFP) - A former agent with Denmark's
military intelligence was on Tuesday sentenced to six
months behind bars for leaking a classified report to
the media stating there was no evidence of weapons of
mass destruction in Iraq, a Copenhagen court said.

Frank Grevil, 44, admitted to providing the
conservative daily Berlingske Tidende with the report,
addressed to the Danish government.

The paper published excerpts of the report last
February stating that "no reliable information on
operational weapons of mass destruction" existed in
Iraq before the U.S.-led war there.

Grevil, who was sacked from his job, also admitted to
being the anonymous source quoted by the newspaper on
the issue.

Commenting on the verdict, judge Elisabeth Larsen said
Grevil may have damaged the military intelligence
service (FE)'s reputation abroad.

Grevil meanwhile claimed that he had done a public
service by leaking the document, and said he was
surprised by what he called a harsh verdict.

The sentence, he said, "is completely
disproportionate" to the crime.

"It's as if the legal system has forgotten that people
sometime follow their conscience, and it was my
conscience that led me to provide these documents" to
the media, he said, adding that he had hoped for a
suspended sentence.

The leaked report was also an embarrassment for Danish
Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who publicly
insisted that Iraq was producing weapons of mass
destruction as a way of justifying the Scandinavian
country's participation in the conflict.

"Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. This is not
something that we just think. We know it," he told
parliament before the war.


	
	
		
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